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Addendum: If you are here thanks to Etsy’s Facebook post, welcome!! So glad you’re here. Enjoy this feature on Nicole Dextras’ installations and be sure to check out many of the other artists featured on Artsy Forager! Thanks for visiting, hope you make yourself at home.

This Florida girl is pretty new to the powdery white stuff. If you live anywhere with snow, you know, as I am now finding out, that the fluffy white sugar transforms and quiets all around it. But it is a fleeting beauty, only lasting a few months before turning to slush and ushering in the newness of spring. And with the environmental changes taking place and urban sprawl snowballing ( pun intended ), the time and places to enjoy unspoiled beauty is diminishing quickly. The vulnerability of the landscape under the threat of commerce is the underlying theme of Vancouver, BC artist Nicole Dextras’ Ice Typography installations.

View, 6 foot ice letters on the shore of Lake Ontario on Toronto Island during an art residency at the Gibraltar Art Center in 2007.

Her installations of words against backdrops of natural and urban landscapes begin with wood forms which are filled with water and left to freeze. Once frozen, the forms are removed, leaving behind only the ice, which as we all know from Frosty’s story, only lasts for a little while.

Resource, Ice text installed on Lake Nipissing during the Ice Follies exhibition hosted by the WKP Kennedy Gallery in North Bay, Ontario in 2008.

These installations are indeed powerful when whole, but it is once the ice begins to melt, or is blown over by wintery winds that their real potency comes through..

To see more of Nicole Dextras’ poignant installations, please visit her website. During this season of incredible beauty and rampant consumerism, perhaps take a walk in the woods instead of heading to the mall. It will be good for your soul.

Featured image is Legacy, a shot of the plywood forms installed on the frozen Yukon River. All images are via the artist’s website.

Etsy just shared you with us all 🙂 Really cool concept! I’m a Florida girl myself and wish I could go play in the snow too! unfortunately, the Orlando area doesn’t quite fit the bill. But it does “snow nightly” in Disney’s little town named – Celebration. Unfortunately, it’s basically a shaving cream equivalent 😦 Anyway…thanks for sharing!

Haha, Kelly! Greetings from a fellow Floridian! I’m originally from Jacksonville and love the snow so much my niece tossed fake snow instead of flowers at my outdoor January wedding last year. Love being here in the mountains of the Northwest, though we haven’t seen too much of the white stuff lately.